The internet is a dangerous place, and two-factor authentication (2FA) is one of the best ways to keep your accounts secure. It's a real pain to manage, though. Authy makes 2FA slightly less annoying, and it's getting a long-awaited feature today in the beta. You can now secure the app with a fingerprint.

A few days back it was revealed by a security researcher in a post on Medium that the LastPass Authenticator app for 2FA key generation wasn't entirely secure. Access to the keys was ostensibly secured by a PIN/fingerprint, but a workaround was found that allows anyone with the ability to launch an activity on the device, including other installed applications, to access those codes. LastPass has fixed this problem in an update today.

In this age of data breaches and keylogging malware, passwords might not be enough to secure your accounts. That's where two-factor authentication (2FA) comes into play. These single-use codes can keep your data safe, but not all services support 2FA in the standard way. Case in point, Twitter sends a text message for 2FA codes even after you set up an authentication app. So annoying, but you can finally turn SMS off.

The internet is a dangerous place, and two-factor authentication (2FA) is one of the best ways to keep your accounts secure. It's a real pain to manage, though. Authy makes 2FA slightly less annoying, and it's getting a long-awaited feature today in the beta. You can now secure the app with a fingerprint.

Authy is a handy way to manage your 2FA codes because it syncs between devices. The tokens are backed up in the cloud, but they're encrypted.

Google Authenticator is one of many two-factor authentication apps available for Android. While Google's attention is more focused on phone login prompts, Authenticator remains a popular choice for having all your 2FA codes for all your accounts in one place. The app has now been updated to v5.0, with a few useful additions in store.

The first new feature is experimental support for USB security keys (FIDO U2F) in Chrome. In other words, once you install the update, you should be able to use Yubikeys and similar devices to login to websites through Chrome (as well as Chrome Custom Tabs/WebViews).

We're putting USB Type-C connectors on everything these days: phones, tablets, laptops, accessories - you name it. The latest USB-C product on the market comes in the form of the YubiKey 4C Nano, an astonishingly tiny authentication key that retails for $60. If you've got a laptop with a USB-C port and like to have additional security, this is absolutely worth taking a look at.

Yubico already sells a USB-C-equipped key called the YubiKey 4C, but it's enormous compared to the new Nano, and it doesn't look like it'd be particularly practical to carry around on something like a laptop.

When it comes to two-factor authentication, SMS isn't exactly the most secure method. Thankfully, AT&T and Verizon just announced a partnership today with T-Mobile and Sprint to improve the security of mobile authentication. Carriers rarely work together, but it would appear that this is a vital enough concern for customers to encourage collaboration.

For the unfamiliar, two-factor authentication (2FA) is a security mechanism in which something known (a password) is combined with something you are known to have (like a phone).

Choosing a strong password to protect your online accounts is a good idea, but the best way to keep your data secure is to enable two-factor authentication (sometimes called two-step verification) on the accounts that support it. This usually requires you to enter a code sent to you by SMS or generated by an app, and this has long been true of Dropbox's two-factor system. Now, Dropbox is making it easier to access your account securely by adding mobile prompts for two-factor.

It's a dangerous internet out there, full of ne'er-do-wells who want nothing more than to get into your personal data. The best way to stop them is to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on your accounts, but managing your 2FA tokens can be a pain. Now, LastPass Authenticator can sync your 2FA data in the cloud so you can get the login codes on any of your devices.

LastPass Authenticator is not just for LastPass—like other 2FA managers, you can add any service that supports the Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP) algorithm.

Not a fan of passwords? Microsoft yesterday announced a new feature for users of the Microsoft Authenticator app that allows the sign-in process on Microsoft accounts to be done using a phone instead. Users can link their phone with an account and receive an interactive notification after entering their username, allowing them to bypass the need to input a password.

If you've used Authy to manage two-factor authentication, then it's basically the same as the process used by that app to link a new device.